


you may think i had bad luck (or did you think i was stuck?)

by Acaeria



Series: oops! all bits [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Ducks, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25964164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acaeria/pseuds/Acaeria
Summary: Honestly, it’s not like a situation like this is exactly out of the ordinary for Young Justice. A sorceress at a zoo turning the patrons into giant animals is exactly the kind of nonsense that they’re forced to deal with on a weekly basis. He’s not exactly thrilled to be half a giant duck, though.
Series: oops! all bits [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858654
Comments: 4
Kudos: 95





	you may think i had bad luck (or did you think i was stuck?)

**Author's Note:**

> this is the third fic i've written that could be referred to as "the duck fic." i think i have a problem.
> 
> quick cw for a non-graphic description of a corpse in the section with steph and jason.
> 
> title from charlie winston's my life as a duck

“Rob! Watch out!” Cissie yells, firing an arrow. Tim jerks around just in time to see the sorceress aim her scepter towards him, and his attempts to dodge the spell end with it just grazing the side of his neck, the force of it knocking him to the ground.

He groans as he rolls to his feet, looking down to assess the damage, and finds one of his arms gone. In its place is a large, feathery wing. His leg feels funny, and when he flexes his toes he finds some resistance, like they’ve suddenly become webbed. And when he reaches up to his face, he finds that his mouth and nose have been replaced by a beak.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he mutters, except it comes out as a garbled series of quacks, and that’s just _great_. 

Honestly, it’s not like a situation like this is exactly out of the ordinary for Young Justice. A sorceress at a zoo turning the patrons into giant animals is _exactly_ the kind of nonsense that they’re forced to deal with on a weekly basis. He’s not exactly thrilled to be half a giant duck, though.

He darts behind a nearby drinks stand and takes stock on the battle, his movements unbalanced thanks to his new… appendages. Impulse and Superboy are rounding up the animal-ified guests, while Wonder Girl is shepherding the last of the non-animal-ified guests towards the exit. Arrowette and Secret are keeping the sorceress occupied, and Robin had been working with them, the goal to distract her until one of them had the opportunity to dart forward and grab her sceptre, which appeared to be the source of her powers.

And now Robin is half-duck. 

Though, looking at the flow of the battle, it looks like the sorceress has lost interest in him, now focusing solely on Cissie and Greta, like she thinks being duck-ified has taken Tim off the board. She’s even got her back to his hiding place, wide open for an attack.

He takes it, stumbling as he sprints on uneven legs– he realises belatedly that the weird feeling in his leg is the joints having shifted, his ankle now much higher and his knee practically in his thigh. It’s uncomfortable and strange and irrelevant to be thinking about as the sorceress turns towards him, mouth open in a small _o_ of shock, and Tim grabs the sceptre from her hand while she’s caught-off guard, skidding to a halt on the other side of Cissie and Greta.

“No!” the sorceress screams, but disarmed, she suddenly looks so much less intimidating. In fact, she looks like a regular college-aged girl, granted a one who’s had a really bad day (or a really good night), her makeup smeared and her hair a flyaway mess. In an instant, Cissie is on her, tying her up with a rope from her quiver. 

“Do you want to give your whole you-meddling-kids speech now, or later?” she asks, finishing tying the rope. The sorceress glares miserably at her.

“It’s unfair that all these animals spend all day locked up in cages. I thought I’d give the guests a taste of that medicine by turning them into animals themselves and trapping them here. I mean, it’s inhumane!”

“It’s really not,” Tim tells her. “Zoos have come a long way from the 1800s. These days, enclosures are built specifically for the needs of the animal, and every animal has a whole enrichment team making sure they stay happy and healthy. Really, these animals are living more pampered lives than most humans do.”

His voice once again sounds squeaky and garbled and he tries his hardest not to groan. Both Cissie and Greta look like they’re trying hard not to laugh. Tim resolutely ignores them.

“You got her!” Bart cries, arriving in the blink of an eye. Kon’s not far behind. “Can we take the sceptre, we really need to turn these guests back– whoa Rob you have a beak.”

“I’d noticed,” Tim quacks wryly. 

“Guests are all safe,” Cassie reports, touching down. “All we need to do now is return the guests to their regular selves and turn this one into law enforcement… Uh. Robin–”

“ _Don’t_ say it,” Tim snaps at her. “Everyone has already said it. I’m well aware.” 

Her lips twitch. “You sound like Donald Duck.”

He groans. “Someone please turn me back,” he moans. “Please. For the love of all that is good in this world.”

“Can I get a video of you yelling angrily first?” Kon asks, pulling out his phone. Tim glares at him, and he holds up his hands in surrender, laughing. “Okay, okay, point taken.”

Cassie ends up being the one to take the sceptre and mercy on Tim, turning him back to his regular self with a flash of green light.

“Better?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Tim says; his voice still sounds a little too squeaky for his own comfort, but his leg feels back to normal and he has an arm again, not to mention a mouth and nose, so he’ll count it as a win. It takes a little longer to transform all the guests back again and debrief with law enforcement, but then they’re on the Supercycle and heading back to Mount Justice for their own team debrief.

“You know what I don’t get,” Bart says, “Why a duck? I mean, wouldn’t a robin be more appropriate?”

“I don’t think the magic was working on any kind of logic, Impulse,” Tim says, but in the back of his mind he’s cringing, because he’s pretty sure he knows why. 

Timothy _Drake_. Magic has a terrible sense of humour.

* * *

The first sense he gets that the magic used to un-duck-ify him hadn’t entirely worked is when he notices that there’s still some webbed skin between his toes, but that’s fine, really. Well, not fine, because if anyone notices he’s gonna have a hell of a time explaining that, but as long as he makes sure to wear socks, it’s _probably_ not going to be a problem, so he doesn’t mention it.

Then, one night he awakes from a nightmare coughing up brown-and-green feathers, which puts him on edge, but after several months of keeping an eye on it he concludes that it only happens after bad dreams which is _weird_ , but also probably fine. Also, by this point it’s been long enough that mentioning it to someone would not only be awkward, but might possibly get him into trouble for not bringing it up sooner. All it takes is one moment of picturing Bruce’s disapproving expression, and he resolves to never bring it up ever.

Then he realises that certain foods have ceased to have nutritional value for him, or even make him sick, including bread, and he begins to realise that maybe keeping quiet had been a mistake.

That’s when the ducks start talking to him. 

* * *

He’s in the park on a summer afternoon with his camera, hoping to get in a little photography (something he’s had little time for lately, what with the whole being Robin and helping Batman and leading Young Justice thing he’s got going on). He winds up by the duck pond, snapping a few photographs of the birds, and that’s when he hears it.

It’s not sudden, but rather gradual, as it dawns on him that the quacks are not just noises but rather _words_ , and then he’s eavesdropping on the ducks’ conversations, easy as anything.

“–bad for you,” one duck is quacking to another.

“It tastes so good, though,” the other replies. 

“It won’t taste good when you’re dead!” the first snaps.

“What the–!” Tim squeaks, falling back on his haunches from his crouch. The ducks both startle, turning to stare at him.

“Did you just–”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dan.”

“No, he just spoke, I swear!”

“He’s _human_.” 

Tim swallows. “Um, hi?”

“There! Did you hear that, Daisy?”

“Coincidence,” the duck, Daisy, scoffs.

“I can understand you,” Tim says, and Daisy suddenly seems a lot less smug as Dan quacks victoriously.

“How?” Dan asks. 

“Uh…” Tim blinks. “Magic, I think.”

“Magic!” Dan crows. “Magic can make humans speak to ducks!” 

“Oh, shut _up_ , Dandelion,” Daisy snaps. “I’m sorry about him,” she says to Tim. Tim blinks. 

“It’s, uh, fine? I’m still trying to process talking to ducks, honestly.”

It’s at that moment that he spots a couple of preteen girls on the other side of the pond whispering and shooting him weird looks and realises what he must look like. His face goes hot with embarrassment.

“It was nice talking to you, but I really gotta go, bye,” he says to the ducks, almost in one breath, and then he bounces to his feet and speeds off. In the back of his mind, he thinks that Bart would be proud. In the front of his mind, he’s having a duck-related freakout, but that’s not unusual for him these days.

God, what is his _life?_

* * *

Being pulled out of the river by Robin– _Damian_ – is more than a little embarrassing. Tim distracts himself from it by coughing up mouthfuls of acrid-tasting water and shaking himself off.

“I knew you were incompetent, _Red Robin_ , but this is really low, even for you,” Damian snides. “Not only were you useless, I had to waste my time rescuing you instead of contributing to the battle.”

Tim rolls his eyes and tries to convince himself not to throw hands with an eleven-year-old. It’s incredibly difficult. “ _Thank you_ , Robin,” he says instead, forcing all of his loathing into those three words. Damian’s scowl intensifies, so he must have had some success.

“Tt. Come, let us get back to Batman and Nightwing. Knowing your luck, they’ve already finished the battle without us.” 

Tim forces himself to his feet once he’s sure he’s rid most of the water from his system. His throat burns and his mouth tastes gross. “Whatever,” he mutters, turning to make his way upstream to where they’d been fighting, before Tim had been thrown into the water and pulled downstream by the current. However, Damian doesn’t follow, instead staring at him with an air of disdainful bafflement.

“How are you _dry?”_ he asks, and oh crap, Tim had forgotten about that.

“Waterproofing on the suit,” he lies. 

“Your skin is dry,” Damian points out.

“Trick of the light,” Tim says, huffing. “Are you coming or not?”

Damian grumbles but drops the subject. Tim sees him eyeing him suspiciously out of the corner of his eye, and hopes nothing bad comes of this.

* * *

“Ugh,” Steph says, wrinkling her nose as she shines her flashlight on the body. It’s the third they’ve found in the past month– there’s a new serial killer in Gotham. The biggest tie between all of their victims is where they were found: lying half-in, half-out of some body of water. This latest corpse has been left in the duck pond; the ducks are all clustered on the opposite bank, quacking uncomfortably.

“Looks like it was left here recently,” Jason says, stooping for a closer inspection. “Sometime this evening, I’d guess. After dark, so there was a low chance of anyone seeing the murderer.”

“Great,” Steph grouses. “No witnesses. _Again_. Unless we can somehow figure out a way to ask the ducks whodunnit.”

Tim blinks. “We can,” he says, without thinking.

“Uh, what?” Steph asks. Oh, no. Tim freezes, going over the options in his head, but– it’s Steph and Jason. Out of everyone, they’re least likely to tell Bruce the truth.

“We can ask the ducks what happened,” he says.

“What, can you talk to birds now, Replacement?” Jason asks, sarcasm heavy in his voice. Tim just nods.

“Well– not any birds. Just ducks, in particular.”  
They’re both staring at him now with unabashed bafflement. “Is this some kind of joke?” Jason asks, disbelief thick in his voice.

“No.”

“Are you going to explain?” Steph asks. “You can’t just drop ‘I can talk to ducks’ with no context! What the hell, Tim?”

Tim sighs. “I was on a mission with Young Justice a couple years back when I got partially turned into a duck. We thought we’d reversed the effects of the spell, and for the most part, we did, but there were some… side effects.”  
“Side effects,” Jason echoes.

“At first, it wasn’t that bad, so I didn’t mention it. By the time I realised I was in massively over my head it was too late to bring it up without getting a massive lecture, so I didn’t bother.”

“What kind of side effects?” Steph asks.

“Well. I can talk to ducks, for one,” Tim says. “My, uh, toes are webbed. I’m pretty waterproof. Sometimes I cough up feathers? And there are certain foods I can’t really eat. Like bread.”

Stephanie glares at him. “You told me you were on a low-carb diet!”

“I kinda am. Because, you know, bread is bad for ducks.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Jason mutters. Tim can’t tell if the look on his face is delighted or exasperated. “ _You’re part duck_ . You’ve been part duck for _years_ longer than was necessary, because you were too awkward to tell B about it.”

“Would you have told him?” Tim challenges.

“No, but it doesn’t stop this from being an absolutely _ridiculous_ situation.” 

Tim folds his arms and glares. “Do you want me to talk to the duck or not?”

“Oh, go ahead,” Jason says, gesturing. “Work your duck magic.”

Tim rolls his eyes, grumbling under his breath as he heads over to the ducks and bends down to speak to them. He stops by the pond every so often, usually after dark when the park is emptier, to chat with them, and most of them are familiar with him by now.

“Hi guys,” he greets. “Rough night?”

“You have _no_ idea,” Dandelion quacks back. Tim hears Steph gasp delightedly behind her, and resolutely ignores her.

“Reckon you could give me some details on the person who left the body here? It’s kind of important.”“Well, sure,” Dan says. “Let me see…”

Tim makes notes as Dan explains what he saw. When the duck is finished, he stands, offering a, “Thank you so much. We’ll be sure to get the body out of your pond as soon as possible,” before heading back to the others and handing over his notepad for them to take a look. 

Jason is openly gaping, and Steph is barely holding back laughter. “Oh my god,” she wheezes. “You just went over there and– and quacked and it– it replied, oh my god.” 

Tim rolls his eyes. “Thank you for talking to the witnesses, Tim,” he grumbles. “Thank you for getting our only lead, Tim.”

“We should get back and run this through your fancy computer,” Jason says, but Tim can _hear_ the smirk in his voice, even through the hood’s filters. 

“Sure, let’s go,” Tim huffs, and walks off without waiting for them. They catch up quickly, Steph quickly sobering from her laughing fit.

“You know,” she says, as they reach the park gates, “This makes a lot of sense.”  
Tim glances at her from the corner of his eye. “It does?” he asks, a little warily.

“Yeah,” Steph says. “Back when we were dating, people used to ask me what I saw in you, and I’d always reply, _he’s cute, in a duckling sort of way_.” 

“You did not.”

“I did!”

Jason laughs, the sound buzzing through his voice modulator, and Tim shoots Steph a glare. She’s grinning widely at him, but there’s sincerity in her face, too.

“I hate you,” he snaps. “I hate you both.”

“ _I hate you both,_ ” Steph mocks in a Donald Duck impression, and Tim raises his eyes to the heavens, once again asking how this became his life.

* * *

“You should make your codename Drake,” Bart tells him, and Tim glares.

“That’s not funny.”  
“It wasn’t a joke!” Bart insists. “What’s that look for?”

“Steph and Jason already give me so much shit about the duck thing, I don’t need it from you guys, too.”

“The… duck thing?” Kon asks, sounding genuinely confused, and suddenly it dawns on Tim that he’d never mentioned it to any of them.

“What are you talking about?” Cassie asks.

“Uhh…” Oops. “Do you remember that one mission in a zoo, with that sorceress turning people into giant animals?”  
“Sure,” Bart says, “You got turned into a duck, and then Cassie turned you back.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, “Except it didn’t exactly… work. Completely.”

“What do you mean, completely?” Kon asks, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. Tim groans.

“I’m still slightly part duck, okay? The magic didn’t totally work, and by the time I’d figured out it was a problem, I didn’t want to mention it, because you _know_ Batman would have given me so much shit for it, and…”

“Tim,” Cassie says, “Are you saying that you’ve been _part duck_ for _years_ because you didn’t want to get yelled at by Batman?”

“Uh. Kinda, yeah.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” she says. “How did we ever used to think you were the responsible one?”

“That’s peak human disaster energy, dude,” Bart says.

“Duck disaster energy?” Kon muses. Tim groans again.

“I’m never going to live this down,” he mutters.

“Nope!” Bart pops the p, grinning. “I still think you should change your name to Drake, though.”

“Why?”

“ _Because_ . Everyone would think it referenced dragons, and those in the know would know it’s your last name, but us? We’d all know that it’s about your super secret duck powers. Every time someone said your name, it’d be an inside joke.”  
“Yeah, no,” Tim says. “And they’re _not_ ‘super secret duck powers.’” 

“They’re totally super secret duck powers,” Cassie says, grinning. “Come on, wonder boy, embrace it. You’re no longer the token normal human member of the team.”

Tim has lost count of the amount of times he’s groaned in the past few minutes. He thinks he should start charging.

Kon wraps an arm around his shoulders, grinning. “Even if you don’t go for Drake, you should totally change your name to reference your new skillset. Red Duck?”

“Waterfowl,” Cassie says. 

“Captain Quack?” Bart suggests.

“You’re the _worst_ ,” Tim grumbles.

“We’re the _best_ ,” Kon corrects. “Hm, what about Webby?”

“Yeah, and I’ll go around solving crimes in a Ducktales cosplay while I’m at it.” The others ignore him.

“Mallard.”

“Ducky.”

”The World’s Greatest Ducktective.”

“The Ugly Duckling.”

“Hey!”

“Lemonade Stand.”

“That’s it, I’m blocking you.”

“This is a verbal conversation.”

“I’m blocking you in real life!”

The four of them fall about into laughter, and if Tim’s snorts are interspersed with quacks, nobody reacts other than to laugh even harder.

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to jade, mmagicss, and firegirl from the fandom support discord for duck-themed name suggestions! 
> 
> feel free to hmu on tumblr @fliipclaw (main) or @bullyingbatman (dc/batfam). also, check out my other fics if you're so inclined, there's plenty more where this nonsense came from.


End file.
